This invention relates to health care method and system that prevents overweight conditions in children and adults by long term monitoring of their weight progress and predicting the occurrence of an overweight condition.
There are many types of weight control systems and methods. Many weight control plans are available to individual users from which the user can select a particular program designed to control the weight of the individual.
Numerous patents are directed to different types of health care systems, some examples are provided below: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,808,694; 4,237,344; 4,318,447; 4,366,873; 4,423,792; 4,576,244; 5,014,298; 5,023,901; 5,127,003; 5,142,484; 5,170,426; 5,218,344; 5,412,564; 5,596,994; 5,704,350; and 6,336,136.
For the correct correlating weights of individuals of different age, gender, and height with respective to weight control diet plans, recommendations of the following book: Bowes and Church""s Food Values of Portions Commonly Used 15th edition revised by Jean A. T. Pennington, Ph.D., R. D. Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, 1989, are available.
Despite the methods and apparatus mentioned above many adult Americans and children are still overweight. It seams that these poor results are due to the fact that overweight people tend to consult doctors after they became overweight instead of before the condition occurs. Once a person is overweight it is often more difficult to treat the condition.
The present disclosure relates to the general field of information services, education, and personal heath care and more particularly, a computerized nondialog system that conveys one-way health awareness messages and maintains surveillance of a user by hidden monitoring weight and height information. The present disclosure uses a network service which provides feedback warnings to a client""s primary doctor to increase or maintain healthy changes over a period of time and comprises means for measuring and recording a client""s weight and height and transmitting this information by e.g., internet, wireless communication or other data transfer means for use in a overweight preventing program.
A method and system for preventing an overweight condition in an individual by using a device to remotely monitor the weight of the individual and providing that information to a remote system in order to predict an overweight trend and take the necessary steps (e.g., dieting prior to the overweight condition) in order to curtail the overweight condition from occurring.
One aspect of the present disclosure is to provide a Hidden Overweight Preventing System (HOPS) that identifies the first signs of an overweight condition in a monitored individual. The system prevents the overweight condition from occurring by monitoring an individual""s weight periodically before they become overweight. Accordingly, the monitoring and analyzing means will provide a warning to the individual""s primary doctor of an overweight condition and it will be much easier to for the individual""s doctor to treat the overweight condition.
More particularly, the instant apparatus and method provides a very quick reading of the weight and occasionally (once in a month) the height of the individual before he or she goes to bed.
Furthermore, this system utilizes a measuring means whose power is turned off and activated by the individual automatically when he or she steps onto the platform of the power-controlled weight and height measuring devices.
Another object of the present disclosure is to provide a more reliable overweight preventing system, which is also convenient to the individual or user. The device and method of the present disclosure employs an automatic analyzer of the weight progress of an individual in order to create a trend of the individual""s weight progress (either upward, downward or the same) and send a warning about signs of an overweight condition or abrupt weight loss to the individual""s primary doctor. By using trending predictions the doctor will be able to predict an overweight condition several months before it will occur.
When the first signs of overweight condition or trend are observed or predicted, the apparatus of the present disclose allows the individual to choose a diet plan and exercises from a plurality of diet plans and exercises in the memory of a personal computer that can be connected to the system.